Saturday, February 15, 2014

VSF Battle Revisited

Overview

Wee Aggro, Aggro84, and myself had a chance to re-run an earlier battle from last year. The time we've had has been spare and so this was a welcome match-up! Aggro84 decided to mentor Wee Aggro and I was the opposition.

Assemblies

Aggro's Assembly included many Beasts with Elites, Marksmen, and a Heroic. My assembly had many Average with Melee weapons and my Elite and Heroic were given Pistols and Heavy Armor.

Battlefield

We used the same rosters for our assemblies but we decided to go urban this time. Gamekastle in San Jose had a decent street board that we overlayed our terrain. Our mission was the Treasure Hunt one found in the full-color MEST Basic Rules . We deployed 9 Objective Markers [ OM ] and placed them hovering within 8" near the center of the 48"x48" battlefield and no closer than 3" to each other. Afterwards we deployed our assemblies at opposite edges.

Resource Cards

For every Objective Marker retrieved a player can draw from the Resource Cards deck which is an Advanced Rule feature. Each card might award additional bonus Resource Points [ RPs ] to augment the collection of the OM or have some game effect that can be good or bad.

Victory Conditions

The player with the most RPs is given 1 Victory Point [ VP ]. The player that KO'd or Eliminates the greater number of enemy is given 1 VP. The player that crosses the mid-line of the battlefield with the greater number of models is given 1 VP. The player that forces the other to bottle-out is given 1 VP. These incentives shaped our game-play strategy.

Aggro's starting line-up. There's four OMs within view.

The starting line-up had three Beasts. You can see
in the back one of the OMs near those quick models.

Those little black/purplish tokens identify the models
as being Hidden. Hidden models receive many
benefits, one of which is that they can't be
targeted for Range Combat unless first detected.

A high shot of the starting conditions. My forces are
way in the back near the top.

This is one of my blurry smartphone pics. Sorry.

One of the Beasts makes a run to carve out a
tactical position near the skull-pile OM; it goes into Wait.
Another Beast runs to the barrel OM. The two other
OMs are taken by a third Beast at the jalopy and by a
Marksman near the south-west wall at the street-lamp.

From this angle you can see that Wee Aggro
has secured 1 VP for most objective markers, and one
more for crossing the center with at least one model.
At the left his quick beast is fighting my Turk Marksman
for the bone-pile OM. My forces at the right are bit slow
but they have been moving into position. The Elite
with the pistols is in Wait to cover the skull-pile OM.

Here's my Turk Marksman and the Beast. It doesn't look
good; he's been Wounded and is already Nervous.

Aaargh! Turkman down! Apparently the Beast is
now Distracted and this may slow it down.

Meanwhile across that particular wall you can see
that I've got another shooter in position and Hidden.

Across the street in the courtyard I've bean able to
maneuver several of my characters into position.
This particular area becomes a critical choke-point because it
is also at the mid-line of the battlefield. The Beast
already took the other OM and so I'm stuck trying to
acquire VPs by other means.

Back near the Turkman I've been able to bring into my
Elite and Heroic to acquire the bone-pile OM.
Another Beast was fielded to prevent that and
also Wee Aggro decided to bring in one of his shooters.
I got the OM for myself when I brought in the Heroic.

You can see that my Heroic with the Sword and the
Elite really kicked some butt. Though it looks bad
for my Elite this little Scrum was mine to own.

OK. This is back at the other courtyard. You can see
that I've been able to bring about my Leader and
begun getting closer towards the mid-line.

Here is my last picture. I've been
doing mop-up work in that courtyard.
At this point Wee Aggro forfeits
knowing that it is a matter of time.
I win with achieving the most KO'd and Eliminated, and with the most
models crossing the mid-line.